Highly desirable Beatles Abbey Road album cover lithograph from a series of lithographs entitled The Beatles Album Artwork Collection. The collection was produced by Musicom who in 1993. secured the rights from Apple Corps Ltd., to use the artwork from the original 12 Beatles album covers from Please Please Me to Let It Be as lithographs. The wide lower margin, bears the Apple logo and a licensing caption for Apple Corps Limited.
This beautiful lithograph measures a large 22.5 x 26.5 and is printed on acid free 100 # dull cover stock. In fine condition and will be shipped rolled, there are a few very small spots in the framing area in left top margin, which would go unnoticed once framed.
Iain MacMillan was the photographer who took this iconic album cover photograph on August 8, 1969, employing 10 minutes of time to take six photographs that day. Paul McCartney picked the fifth of the six shots to be used as the album cover—the rest were discarded. Over the years MacMillan issued only a handful of this Abbey Road photograph, which has sold sold for over $25,000. Although this is a lithograph and not a photograph, it was printed using the original album cover artwork that Apple Corps licensed to Musicom to be used for the printing of this lithograph.
What makes this particular lithograph so unique is that it’s not numbered, the regular edition size for each album was 9,800 lithographs, that were all plate signed by The Beatles. A handful of these lithos were made without the plate signatures with the intention of having Paul McCartney or Ringo Starr sign them as a special limited edition lithograph, which never materialized. This Apple-licensed lithograph, made for one of the best albums ever made and the Beatles' last, is an extremely rare find.
